I'm a technology, privacy, and information security reporter and most recently the author of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a chronicle of the history and future of information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks and beyond.
I've covered the hacker beat for Forbes since 2007, with frequent detours into digital miscellania like switches, servers, supercomputers, search, e-books, online censorship, robots, and China. My favorite stories are the ones where non-fiction resembles science fiction. My favorite sources usually have the word "research" in their titles.
Since I joined Forbes, this job has taken me from an autonomous car race in the California desert all the way to Beijing, where I wrote the first English-language cover story on the Chinese search billionaire Robin Li for Forbes Asia. Black hats, white hats, cyborgs, cyberspies, idiot savants and even CEOs are welcome to email me at agreenberg (at) forbes.com. My PGP public key can be found here.

An Interview With WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world’s secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago.Over the last year his information insurgency has dumped 76,000 secret Afghan war documents and another trove of 392,000 files from the Iraq war into the public domain–the largest classified military security breaches in history. Sunday, WikiLeaks made the first of 250,000 classified U.S. State Department cables public, offering an unprecedented view of how America’s top diplomats view enemies and friends alike.

But, as Assange explained to me earlier this month, the Pentagon and State Department leaks are just the start.

For our cover story on Assange and the coming age of leaks, click here.

In a rare, two-hour interview conducted in London on November 11, Assange said that he’s still sitting on a trove of secret documents, about half of which relate to the private sector. And WikiLeaks’ next target will be a major American bank. “It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume,” he said, adding: “For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails.”

Here is an edited transcript of that discussion:

Forbes: To start, is it true you’re sitting on trove of unpublished documents?

Julian Assange: Sure. That’s usually the case. As we’ve gotten more successful, there’s a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly.

You mean as your personal profile rises?

Yeah, the rising profile of the organization and my rising profile also. And there’s a network effect for anything to do with trust. Once something starts going around and being considered trustworthy in a particular arena, and you meet someone and they say “I heard this is trustworthy,” then all of a sudden it reconfirms your suspicion that the thing is trustworthy.

So that’s why brand is so important, just as it is with anything you have to trust.

And this gap between your publishing resources and your submissions is why the site’s submission function has been down since October?

We have too much.

Before you turned off submissions, how many leaks were you getting a day?

As I said, it was increasing exponentially. When we get lots of press, we can get a spike of hundreds or thousands. The quality is sometimes not as high. If the front page of the Pirate Bay links to us, as they have done on occasion, we can get a lot of submissions, but the quality is not as high.

How much of this trove of documents that you’re sitting on is related to the private sector?

About fifty percent.

You’ve been focused on the U.S. military mostly in the last year. Does that mean you have private sector-focused leaks in the works?

Yes. If you think about it, we have a publishing pipeline that’s increasing linearly, and an exponential number of leaks, so we’re in a position where we have to prioritize our resources so that the biggest impact stuff gets released first.

So do you have very high impact corporate stuff to release then?

Yes, but maybe not as high impact…I mean, it could take down a bank or two.

That sounds like high impact.

But not as big an impact as the history of a whole war. But it depends on how you measure these things.

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you people really have to get off the glenn beck coolaid, it’s damaging to the brain. Instead read. If you had a little self respect you wouldn’t allow this fraud at Fox News abuse your intelligence and you would look up the info for yourself.

How did Martin Luther King made any money? And why was he killed? (now wouldnt this be a more important question to be made?) How does anyone make any money in this fucked up world? Your question is kind of pointless… but I understand why you make it, I know you come from a place where only money driven people make sense to you… moral and truth are secondary, like everything else, because money is on top of everything rigth?

Anyway, do some research in the history for the past years, for starters, see that wikileaks has a founding enterprise in iceland. Also, I believe many people arround the world are supporting wikileaks either with money or effort. But dont believe what I say… go and do your homework.

i think that govt. like Chinese and Russians would we more then willing to pay huge amounts to julian to see america humiliated on the world stage and that is where he gets his funds from.but then even these goverments are not safe from this revolutionist.

Wikileaks costs very little to maintain. For years, it operated almost exclusively on volunteer labor. I’m not sure what they do now since VISA/MASTERCARD decided to block any donations to Wikileaks because they don’t want to displease the almighty US government. This has made the receipt of donations by Wikileaks very difficult.

“But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest.”

I couldn’t possibly be more pleased with what Assange is doing and I look forward to this Bank Document roll out next year. We need more of these types of events. I sincerely hope courage IS contagious.

Two forms of democracy, two forms of justice will not be tolerated. Those who hold the power and the wealth are not untouchable. We will come for you at your work place as surely as we will come for you in your home. Your money will not insulate you. Your crimes will be revealed.

Transparency? Really? That’s what you want? Be careful what you wish for…. It is naive at the highest level to think that if Wikileaks’ disclosures go unchecked, and are not stopped, that these disclosures will be limited to governments and big business. At some point personal disclosures will begin and the precedent will have been set. Want your social security number shared openly? How about your tax returns? Medical history? Got any STDs you want the world to know about for the sake of transparency? Cell phone records? Maybe your wife won’t notice that one number you call 27 times a day. Be careful what you wish for……

Our Gov’t already spies on us. For some reason my credit rating score is required for my auto insurance company to do business with me. The Clintons and Rice’s of the world have been busy for years compiling dossiers on their citizens. And they’ve been linking with the Corporations we are mandated to buy from with our laws(mandatory car insurance) or that we need (health, loans, etc).

The primary reason for secrecy to exist within a Gov’t is to protect itself from it’s citizens and others to the wrong doing in which it engages. If we (the USA)are truly different, if we are truly the beacon of light and stand for all that is noble we will survive this. If you are willing to deny truth to advance your goals you deserve neither freedom nor democracy. And you most assuredly cannot claim to be the example of morality in the world.

Your examples of Wikileaks publishing a medical document on someone having an STD is pure hyperbole. Assange’s goals are regime change and no purpose would be served with a revelation of this nature. WL has demonstrated responsibility already in redacting informants names, although hearing the Pentagon admit this after using it to frighten the public is not likely.